BIRDS visiting gardens are the only wild creatures which most people encounter nowadays.

HITLER mesmerised Germany and people followed him in their millions.

THE naked mole rat is not the prettiest of creatures.

THE mournful call of the curlew resonates with the Irish psyche, a reminder of ancient tragedies, the great famine or the emigrant ship.

THE red grouse, a relative of the pheasant and the farmyard hen, lives in bogs, where it feeds on the shoots of young heather.

CURRENT economic woes prompt memories of the cash-strapped 1940s and ’50s.

I VISITED the Cairngorms for Red Squirrel Week, courtesy of Visit Scotland.

STEPHEN HAWKING’S 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, surprised everybody by becoming a bestseller.

A FEW decades ago, whale sightings were rare events.